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Movies Privacy Security Sony

Sony To Make Movie of Edward Snowden Story 107

Posted by samzenpus from the leaks-camera-action! dept.
wiredmikey (1824622) writes "Sony Pictures Entertainment has acquired the rights to the new book by journalist Glenn Greenwald about fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, the studio said Wednesday. James Bond franchise producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli will make the movie version of 'No Place to Hide,' described as 'a political film that will resonate with today's moviegoers.' The book, subtitled 'Edward Snowden, the NSA and the US Surveillance State,' was just recently published in Britain by Hamish Hamilton and in the United States by Metropolitan Books."
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Sony To Make Movie of Edward Snowden Story More

Sony To Make Movie of Edward Snowden Story

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  • Got it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2014 @07:26PM (#47005135) Journal

    Snowden just gave me a pre-release

  • NSA to track ticket sales (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Cash, baby!

  • Reserved Judgement (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GrahamCox ( 741991 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2014 @07:40PM (#47005225) Homepage
    This could be a good opportunity to wake up the populace to the very real threat to their liberty that mass surveillance is. Or it could just be a stupid "action" thriller that focusses on the wrong thing entirely - Snowden's flight. I'll reserve judgement, but my bet would be on the latter.

    • Re:Reserved Judgement (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Adam Colley ( 3026155 ) <mog@ k u p o .be> on Wednesday May 14, 2014 @08:02PM (#47005369)

      Heh

      Remember Takedown?

      Accuracy will be the first thing to go in the name of artistic license.

      • Re:Reserved Judgement (Score:4, Interesting)

        by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2014 @08:21PM (#47005455) Journal

        Perhaps you don't understand how it works. Accuracy is not important if it gets people exercised about their rights being violated by the government. If you want accuracy, you go to a journalist. If you want agitprop, you go to a filmmaker.

        And I'm not using "agitprop" as a negative.

        The surveillance state is growing so powerful so quickly, nothing short of a lot of people making this their number one issue can possibly stop it. I don't care if the movie takes shortcuts or glosses over details, as long as it changes some minds.

        Of course, if Sony's in charge, it could easily paint Snowden as History's Greatest Monster and be nothing more than a commercial for how great it is to have a bunch of g-men upskirting your private communications.

        Tell you one thing, though. Just the fact that Sony's making a movie means that some people who've ignored the whole issue up to now will get to know something about what happened. If it forces them to go look up some sources and find out just what kind of wolf-in-sheep's clothing the Obama Administration turned out to be, it will be worth it. Maybe it'll stop another authoritarian corporatist (Hillary) from becoming president. If a few things break right, we could end up throwing the elections of 2016 up for grabs, which could only be a good thing. If it gets people to go out into the streets, it would be a great thing.

        • Re:Reserved Judgement (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Charliemopps ( 1157495 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2014 @10:20PM (#47006071)

          If you lie while making your argument, all anyone will talk about is the lie. There's nothing quite so stupid as hading your enemy a dagger right before your fight.

          • There's a difference between lying and taking license with a story. You might combine two minor characters into one, or leave out a detail of a story that could be distracting and not add anything to the narrative.

            Every story that is told is an adjustment of the truth. Just by having a point of view, you necessarily limit the truth. All narrators are unreliable to a certain extent.

        • If you want accuracy, you go to a journalist.

          That's debatable, [youtube.com] given that cybernetically this is a special case of the Ken Thompson Unix Compiler Hack. [bell-labs.com]

          Which watchers who watch what watchers warrant watching?

          • Good point. But any film is a distortion of the truth to a certain extent. The only measure is whether or not it is effective.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Painting him as the bad guy wouldn't work. Overt propaganda is much less effective than covert. Just look at most WWII-era propaganda and compare it with modern propaganda. My guess is they will end the movie like "but was it worth it?", showing the character's actions as negative but not evil. So people will go out of it thinking "oh, he's an idiot who didn't think of the consequences, I'm much more clever and so is Big Brother."

        • Aww, and you were doing so well right up until you had to do the red-vs-blue baiting.

          • The only problem with what you say is that supported Obama's candidacy. I consider myself a whole lot more "Blue" than Barack Obama. And it's with no joy that I say that he's a failed and destructive president.

            I was not engaging in "red-vs-blue" baiting.

            • Well unfortunately, whether intentionally or not, by criticizing only one side you're implicitly exculpating the other by omission. Same had you only mentioned Bush, since both have played their parts in this issue. Not that I disagree with what you said, only that you may have muddied your message with that closing paragraph. Consider this a stylistic suggestion rather than an argument.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

          CreepyDOL [ussjoin.com] is the solution. Make surveillance so cheap and pervasive, and most importantly so visible to everyone that they demand more security.

          • That is a very bad idea. I know it sounds clever to say the answer to ubiquitous surveillance is for everyone to have ubiquitous surveillance, but it ignores the dehumanizing effect of lost privacy.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

              We already have ubiquitous surveillance, it just isn't very visible. Take ANPR (automated car tracking). Hardly anyone cares, but if someone developed a cheap webcam based system where people could upload the data in realtime to a website so everyone could see it they would.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Agares ( 1890982 )
          I really wish more people saw things like you do. Then we wouldn't be in the mess we are in now, or at the very least we would be able to get out of it.
    • Or it could be one of those serious dramas intended for the Oscars. I mean the Snowden brand could be good enough for a low-budget movie to break even, so if you add an A-list director and actor, it could make more money than a blockbuster that gets universally panned by the critics. Every studio has an "indie" pictures divsions precisely for this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]

    • Reserved Judgement (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I was thinking the same thing, however considering it is Sony I will have no interest in watching the movie. And I highly doubt the movie will be remotely accurate, movies like this are only about 10% close to what actually happened. I think there should be more then enough /. users that have seen these type of movies to know it will be nothing more then a atypical over-produced inaccurate 'based on real life events'.

      I would be willing to bet they will not be showing a maintenance contractor stealing data f

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by johnlcallaway ( 165670 )

      You mean the threat that some self-righteous person can lie and manipulate his fellow workers into risking their jobs and livelihoods just so the self-righteous person can get some attention?? That if someone at work asks you to do something that isn't following procedure that you probably shouldn't do it because you could lose your job for someone that doesn't give a crap about you and will just flee the country and leave you hanging in the wind??

      I hope so, maybe we can stop more security leaks.

      Because th

      • Re:Reserved Judgement (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) * on Thursday May 15, 2014 @06:40AM (#47007627) Homepage Journal

        Because the last time I checked ... nothing has changed. Other than Snowden getting far more press coverage than he deserves.

        Thanks to Snowden people are focused on securing the internet. Old protocols are being re-examined, new ones are being developed to be secure from the start. We found out about numerous back doors and weakened systems. We learned of previously unknown security flaws. We found about about widespread criminality and abuse, and reacted to it.

        Companies that the NSA/GCHQ had hacked have made changes to secure themselves. Maybe not enough, but things have definitely improved and they will be looking to block spies in the future.

        Even if you think that is all bad, at the very least Snowden demonstrated how insecure the NSA is. If he could get all that information from such a lowly position then it is safe to assume that the Russians, Chinese, Iranians and a number of other agencies had already infiltrated and gathered it all anyway. Americans should know that their country's secrets have been widely and easily compromised.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This could be a good opportunity to wake up the populace to the very real threat to their liberty that mass surveillance is. Or it could just be a stupid "action" thriller that focusses on the wrong thing entirely - Snowden's flight. I'll reserve judgement, but my bet would be on the latter.

      Surveillance is not a threat to liberty. Assholes with authority are, even with the wrong information. You don't need surveillance to be an asshole with authority, and surveillance isn't what makes you one.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Sciath ( 3433615 )
        Lord Acton; "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." The very fact that people with "capabilities" be they the President of the U.S., Dept. of Defense Secretary, NSA director or a peon surveillance technician, the very capability is the corrupting factor. People can't resist exercising the power and capabilities they have; it's human nature. Thus, the very existence of such a corrupting technology makes the technology inherently destructive. So... I'd have to say, if the technology were not ava

    • We're talking about a big studio. What do you think you'll get? A biography with a painstaking quest for authenticity, or an action flick with lots of kaboom?

  • If there was ever a reason to want Michael Bay... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rinikusu ( 28164 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2014 @07:44PM (#47005247)

    By itself, neat story, but not something I'd spend $15 to see. Now, add some gratuitous explosions and robots...

    VO: "They wanted him dead. He wanted to live."

    little girl holding a teddy bear: "Daddy, will the bad men come for you?"

    Jean Claude Van Damme as Edward Snowden: "No, sweetie... not with my army they won't..."

    Thousands of little robots come streaming out of his garage, destroying an FBI surveillance van...

  • I four One (Score:3)

    by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2014 @07:46PM (#47005263) Journal
    Would go see it in the theatre even if it put me on some kind of list this comment does not qualify for.

    Whether that makes me naive, stupid, or patriotic is unclear, which is fitting, since I think that's right where Edward is presently.

  • You gotta admire Greenwald (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Holy shit, you gotta admire the self promotion and ego of this guy. Leave his reporter job because he might have to share stories with his colleagues, drip-drip-drip out the stores to keep yourself constantly in the news, quick-as-a-bunny get SOMETHING on Snowden out fast before that 15 minute train leaves the station, and sell movie rights. Dollars to donuts he's got a nice queue of stories lined up for pre-shooting, wrap-up, and probably some doozies during the ad lead-up for the release. And you can b

  • Business as usual or ? (Score:3, Funny)

    by davmoo ( 63521 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2014 @09:13PM (#47005729)

    So, is Greenwald gonna share any of the money with Snowden, or is he just going to laugh all the way to the bank while Snowden rots in Russia.

  • Hmm (Score:3)

    by neonmonk ( 467567 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2014 @09:51PM (#47005941)

    Seems a bit premature. What makes them think the Snowden story is over? ...or are they hoping for sequels?

    • "...And finally in entertainment news, Sean Bean has been cast to play the lead role in the new Snowden movie"

  • Definitely will be #1 with a bullet in The Pirate Bay*...

    (*) Unless the Pirate Bay has been blocked in your jurisdiction for your safety and to protect the children, citizen.

  • ... I don't predict a high amount of accuracy.

  • ...Did not seem too currently informed. Better try again. [hollywoodreporter.com]

  • I want to hear the George Hotz story

  • I wonder if Sony appreciates that they try to be as much of a threat to privacy as does the NSA.

    Hell, I strongly suspect Sony is a contributor to the NSAs data collection crap.

    And they certainly employ the same tactics to bully people over copyright.

    Because, Sony are collectively assholes.

  • .... Brazil [wikipedia.org].

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